Sprinklers have been successfully used for the protection of property such as factories, department stores and shopping centres for well over 130 years and there is now a growing appreciation of their potential to save lives in domestic properties where the majority of deaths from fire occur.

Sprinklers are ideal for protecting homes for the following reasons:

• Proven Success
  Over the past 130 years sprinklers have had a better than 99% success rate in controlling fires around the world.
• Widely Used
  More than 70 million sprinkler heads are installed worldwide each year.
• Ultimate Protection
  Sprinklers virtually eliminate fire deaths, reduce injuries by at least 80%, reduce property damage by 90% and substantially reduce damage to the environment from fire.
• Dependable
  Sprinklers not only warn of a fire, they also act immediately to control it - even if no body is present.
• Responsive
  Over 60% of fire casualties are physically or mentally disadvantaged, which prevents or slows their escape from a fire. Sprinklers will at the very least control the fire and will raise the alarm, greatly extending the time available for escape or rescue.
• Saves Lives
  Every day two people die and fifty are injured in fires in the UK. 75% of all fire casualties occur at home, where you are three times more at risk than anywhere else. Your chance of experiencing a major fire in your lifetime is just one in five.
• Cost Effective
  Sprinklers are NOT expensive; normally costing around 1% or 2% of the cost of construction of a new building. The use of sprinklers will usually allow design freedoms as well, which can reduce construction costs and improve usability of the building.
• Reliable
  Records show that the chance of finding a faulty sprinkler head is about one in sixteen million. You have more chance of winning the Lottery!
• Work individually
  Each sprinkler is individually triggered directly by the heat of a fire. Only the sprinkler(s) directly affected by the fire go off, NOT all of them.
• Use Less Water
  Because the sprinkler system attacks the fire immediately, it is much smaller than the fire the Fire Brigade meets when it arrives some 5 - 30 minutes later. Sprinklers typically use around sixty litres per minute of water each to control the fire which is between 4% and 1% of the water used by EACH Fire Brigade hose. So in the event of a fire the sprinklers will actually reduce water damage.

Perhaps most importantly when reducing preventable deaths due to fire is that:

There have been NO deaths from fire in a building fully protected by sprinklers in the UK.

For more information about how sprinklers work, or for the facts related to the most commonly held myths about sprinklers click on the buttons below to view each section.

View or download the Think Sprinkler Booklet below which you can read or pass onto others and spread the word about the benefits of domestic sprinklers.

Think Sprinkler Booklet (2.3mb)